Tag: Christian Rub

Proof That It’s Pre-Code

If you couldn’t tell from the title, this deals with a professional woman, one who has decided to be a doctor. I’ll touch on this a bit more below, but this is still heady stuff at the time.

Glenda Farrell, as a touchy nurse, snaps and threatens a kid:

“If you bust one more thing around here, this nurse is going to take your temperature from below the Mason-Dixon line, if you know what I mean!”

Not specifically Pre-Code, but Lyle Talbot is driving Kay Francis out to the country for lunch and he busts out a flask and takes a swig. Her complete non-reaction to him drinking and driving is pretty funny nowadays. Also, I like how she categorizes it to him later, and his reaction:

“Don, you’re drinking too much.”
“There isn’t that much!”

“Well, okay.”

The double whammy of both premarital and extramarital sex. And it’s fun while it lasts!

Unrelated, but Farrell teases another nurse with this putdown, “You just haven’t had enough practice saying ‘no’.”

This one was denied a re-release under the code in 1936 because of its portrayal of an unwed mother giving birth out of wedlock. Also, while it is very coded, there are a pair of lines where the idea of getting an abortion is floated to the mother, who decides against it.